Data can reside on any system of a distributed computing environment. For example, one system may request data stored on disks of another system. Such a request is performed by initiating exemplary file system operations such as “mount” and “showmount.” Further, during the uptime of the distributed computing environment, one system or a group of systems can receive multiple file system operations from a single system. Alternatively, multiple file system operations originating from many systems can be directed towards one system. Unfortunately, the system receiving the multiple file system operations can have performance issues. Specifically, overall performance on the recipient system can decrease.
Sometimes, the system that has performance issues may not be optimized to respond to the multiple file system operations. Thus, to optimize the system, an examination of the performance issues can include analyzing the impact of the multiple file system operations on the various components of the system. For example, the examination may uncover that the multiple file system operations may cause a performance issue because Random Access Memory (RAM) of the system does not have a large enough capacity. Alternatively, the examination may uncover that software operating on the system may interfere with the optimum performance of the system.
Currently, the examination can be performed by replicating the original distributed computing environment with a test distributed computing environment. Typically, the test distributed computing environment is not identical to the original distributed computing environment and the examination uses recorded multiple file system operations as input to the test distributed computing environment. However, when examining the effect of the recorded multiple file system operations on system performance using the test distributed computing environment, the examination cannot realistically replicate the multiple file system operations from the original distributed computing environment beyond using the recorded multiple file system operations. A simple solution is to build a test distributed computing environment that is identical to the original distributed computing environment. However, this simple solution is cost prohibitive and not scalable, especially for global distributed computing environments.
Alternatively, simulation software can simulate the effect of the multiple file system operations on the system. For example, the recorded multiple file system operations can be the input to the simulation software to determine the performance issues. Further, the simulation software can be executed multiple times with the recorded multiple file system operations. However, using the same recorded multiple file system operations numerous times may not uncover the performance issues. For example, the recorded multiple file system operations may not have the realistic combination of multiple file system operations that cause the performance issues. A simple solution is to record sets of multiple file system operations. However, recording sets of multiple file system operations from the original distributed computing environment is time consuming.
Accordingly, without resorting to building identical test distributed computing environments or using recorded sets of multiple file system operations, what is needed is a method and system for realistically simulating multiple file system operations of a distributed computing environment.